Louisville-UMKC Quotes

UMKC at Louisville
Dec. 22, 2015 | KFC Yum! Center
Postgame Quotes

Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino

(Opening Statement) "We want to play physically and we did a good job tonight of doing that. We try to find the silver lining in every cloud. For this game, it was getting some guys minutes that wouldn't normally play. I wanted Deng Adel to get 8-10 minutes, and we were looking to get him back on the court, so mission accomplished there. We're looking forward to playing tomorrow and getting some more guys minutes.

(On the team playing grind it out games) "Yeah I think they're a very physical basketball team. The good thing is, with the exception of one or two plays, we didn't turn it over much. We really passed the ball well, did a lot of good things. I thought Nanu (Onuaku) and Jaylen (Johnson) were very active tonight. We didn't rebound the ball particularly well in the first half, but I thought Nanu and Jaylen were very active the whole night. Jaylen is getting a lot better, which is good to see."

(On signs of Jaylen's improvement) "Well I think he's becoming active. I think Jaylen doesn't struggle with the physical parts of the game. He struggles with what defense you're in, and things mentally, that you have to learn; the multiple things that go on. I know its real late and you guys want to get in there and get your stuff done, so I'm not going to bore you with a little bit. It was a good win for us, obviously the Minardi Classic means a lot. We have a lot of friends in who contributed the dormitory and I'm real appreciative of them coming in. I think we can get Anas (Mahmoud) back possibly by the Wake Forest game, which will be good- and then the more minutes we get for Matz (Stockman) the better we can become, because he's not a bad basketball player. I didn't expect him to play this year but we didn't expect to have the rash of injuries that were having right now. So we'll look forward to that and keep developing him right now."

UMKC head coach Kareem Richardson

(Opening statement) "I think Louisville is a Final Four caliber team. Their length, size and athleticism certainly wore us down. That's a part of what they do in terms of their pressure - their defense is outstanding."

(You talked about their length, you were able to stand with them in rebounding for most of the game, is that something that you thought you had a chance to hang with them?) "It was certainly a big-time emphasis for us, trying to keep those guys off the offensive glass. I thought we battled, we didn't come up with some clean. On the flip side I thought we did a decent job of getting to the offensive glass - Darnell Tillman leading the way for us with six offensive rebounds."

(On how this Louisville team compares to some of the squads he worked with at Louisville) "I think compared to our national championship team, I think these guys are longer than we were that year and shoot the ball better with Lee, Lewis and Snider shooting the ball well and Donovan Mitchell starting to shoot… there's nothing that this team can't do and they pass the ball exceptionally well."

University of Louisville Athletics

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Deng Adel

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